As I finished this very moving book I couldn't help but think how much more difficult David Carr's struggle to leave the life of drug dependency would be today than it was 20 years ago when he was trying to raise his daughters as a single parent. In those days he was able to pick up enough freelance writing gigs to keep his recovery and his life going. Today that would be so much more difficult for a writer. As is landing a professional journalism job. The newsrooms have really hollowed out since then. I am also reminded of how many alcoholics there must be who cannot face this truth, as Carr himself took so long to understand. That he was not normal. That few alcoholics admit as much to themselves. Carr's story could have ended up much worse than it has. Alcohol is such a scourge. ( )

This one's another midlife memoir. There's no shortage of these out there and the author, to his credit, knows it. A few things set this one apart from the others, though. For one thing, it's got professional-level reporting on incidents that the author freely admits he can't remember all that well. Carr has obviously done his reading on how unreliable memory can be, but he doesn't hide the fact that he finds out some genuinely unpleasant things about his former self and has had work hard to integrate the self that's writing "The Night of the Gun" with the often unpleasant protagonist who's as the center of most of the book's action. While every memoir might be described as an exercise in self-discovery, Carr seems to be especially committed to finding out -- and telling the reader -- who he is and was. He details the evasions that addicts use to get around their own moral beliefs, the languages and habits they share, and all of the things that doing a whole lot of coke -- and then crack -- in the eighties cost him. It mustn't have been pleasant for the author to go over this material -- some of which involves domestic violence and child endangerment -- but he doesn't spare his ego and provides a remarkably clear-eyed of who he was and who he might be now. "The Night of the Gun" suggests that he's a far braver author than others.

Something else that sets this one apart from the pack is the sheer quality of its prose. Carr was a good journalist and knew it: his writing has a verve and spark that suggests that he's no rookie. It takes years of practice and considerable talent to sound this fresh on the page. Lastly, Carr emphasizes throughout "The Night of the Gun" that recovery is an active process, and not just a matter of not drinking, smoking, or sniffing. He should know: fifteen years after he quit coke, he somehow slid a comfortable, suburban kind of alcoholism, something he finds not just painful but also painfully unhip. The way he tells it, it takes work to keep your demons at bay, to maintain connections with others, to find a reason not to get high or drunk. Considering how far Carr was at various points throughout this story, it's incredible that he got as far as he did. The author's death at a relatively young age -- from medical issues not directly connected to his substance abuse -- gives the book an added sense of poignancy, but also seems, in its way, like a genuine victory. Carr seems to worry at various times if the world really needed another recovery memoir, but I'd say that it's better for having this one in it, even if it now serves as its author's own valediction. Fare thee well, Mr. Carr. ( )

r.i.p. ( )

This one's a coin flip between 3 and 4 stars--maybe 3 for the first half and four for the second. The idea of doing a "fact-checked" memoir to counter the entropy and self-deceptions of one's own drug-and-booze-addled memory is really intriguing. And Carr is sufficiently honest about the loathsomeness of his own junkie days to deliver a compelling portrait of addiction. But the result of that starkness is that I just disliked him and couldn't wait for him to pull his act together, which he does somewhat in more nuanced second half. ( )

I am not a person who reads many memoirs, but I am a big fan of Mr. Carr's writing in the NY Times and decided I should give this book a try. It is an amazing book, gripping in the way non-fiction can be. It is truly incredible to see the arc of his life. If this were written as fiction you might be tempted to say it is unrealistic. The writing is crisp and unsparing. I was so taken with this book I missed my Metro stop one morning because I was absorbed in reading. That is the biggest seal of approval I can give a book. ( )